After the Council of Nicsea it seemed as if the Church had entered upon an era of

triumph. But one catastrophe changed the whole face of things. A bishop with Arian
sympathies gained the ear of Constantino, and henceforth the w'hole weight of
imperial influence was brought to bear upon the establishment of heresy. St.
A.thanasius seizing, as he once did, the bridle of the emperor's horse, and insisting
upon his abating his opposition to the Catholic Faith, but in vain, was a symbol of
what was going on. Constantino was persuaded that he was enforcing the Nicene
Faith ; and Eusebius was victorious all along the line, in both mounting himself, from
throne to throne, in the teeth of Nicene regulations, and in deposing the orthodox
bishops. And the weapon that he vic- toriously opposed to the Council of Nice was a
synod convoked by the emperor.' It was a line of action to be repeated in the history
of the Church — viz. a synod of bishops, under the influence of the Crown, deciding
as to the government of the Christian Church. And it entered upon the platform of
Church histor}- under the patronage of the deadliest foe that the Church has ever
known. It was the darling project of an Arianising emperor under the influence of an
Arian bishop. In this case, however, the bishop was the foe, the emperor the
instrument. It was not yet the theory of the independence of National Churches, but
it was akin to it, and its natural parent. The supremacy of the Crown was ousting the
supremacy of the Holy See. Imprisoned or exiled bishops in communion with the See
of St. Peter (reminding us of
' For an interesting expansion of tluK, see The Throne of the Fisherman, by
events in the sixteenth century) were the immediate result of the alHance between
Church and State which sprang up through the wily machinations of Eusebius, Bishop
first of Berytus, then of Nicomedia (when the Court was there), and lastly (on the
Court's removal), Bishop of Constantinople. In concert with the emperor, the whole
constitution of the Church was soon further assailed by the attempt of Eusebius'
successors to base the jurisdiction of patriarchs, not on their connection with
Apostolic origin, but on the secular position of their city. It was the world against the
Apostle ; the crown against the crozier ; Cfesar usurping the prerogatives of Peter.
Constantinople, but a few years ago, was a spot all but unknown, whose bishop was
suffragan to the Bishop of Heraclea. Now it was New Rome, and its bishop aspired
to be a second Pope. The Pope was the successor of St. Peter, and therein his
strength lay ; but that Apostle had selected the centre of the world for the base of
his operations, and as the centre had shifted, why might not the new imperial city be
also the centre of a new patriarchal jurisdiction ? The answer ^as, that Peter, not
Cfesar, is the governor of the Christian •Church.
And under the difficulties which now emerged, in some •sense the greatest that the
Church had as yet had to meet, the government of Peter became the salvation of
the Faith of Nicfea. As the Church entered upon her new course of alliance with the
State, the Eastern bishops more and more discovered a fatal weakness incident upon
their proximity to the new centre of secular power on the shores of the Bosphorus.
On the other hand, the genius for government and the inherent strength and majesty
of the Holy See became more and more pronounced, under circumstances of
unparalleled difficulties. It is evident that the full meaning of the Nicene canons could
only gradually make itself felt ; and the same is true of the guardian of those
canons, viz. the Apostolic See. The history of this eventful period is orientated by a
remark made by St. Gregory the Great in reference to a later Bishop of Constanti-
nople : * As to what he says, that he is subject to the Apostolic
he primacy develops its stores of wisdom and authority to correct the fault. This is
precisely what happened in the post-Nicene period. Until then, as Mr. Allies points
out in his 'Throne of the Fisherman,'' bishops had not learnt to struggle with one
another for place and power, and the need of a head was not so keenly felt. But
when ambition came to curse the East, then came out to view the controlling power
of the Sovereign Pontiff.
This, then, is the salient feature of the next fifty years after Islicsea, viz. the Holy
See ' confirming the brethren ' ^ in the East. The Court bishop in the East was the
new factor in the Church's life and the source of unceasing trouble. Court and bishop
together did their best to deprave the Church's faith. They must have succeeded but
for the unbending firmness of the Holy See, for a council could not guard its own
canons. So far the Apostolic tradition had been guarded by the See of Eome ; and
now the position at once occupied by that see, when the Fathers of Nicpea had
dispersed to their various homes, was precisely that of guardian of the Nicene inter-
pretation of the Apostolic tradition against refractory and Erastian bishops. The
government of the Church was, in fact, not merely episcopal but apostolical ;
episcopacy was unequal to the strain that ensued, but the Holy Apostolic See gave
strength to the episcopal brotherhood.
It was in the course of the struggle that now ensued between Catholic and Erastian
bishops that St. Julius, the reigning Pope (who, after the short reign of St. Mark, had
succeeded St. Sylvester, the president of the Council of Nicfea), wrote a letter of
even exceptional importance, which has been fortu- nately preserved to us by the
care of St. Athanasius. This letter has an important bearing on the Nicene canons ;
it is quoted at length by St. Athanasius, and it affords irrefragable witness to the
existence, in the Nicene period, of the entire claim on the part of Rome to a divinely
instituted authority over East and West alike. It has, moreover, in view of modern
discussions, the advantage of having been protested against by